Notes: After a few lines of The Horse, the fire alarm went off. The band kept playing but the house lights came on and the building was cleared for 20 minutes. The music resumed with Fire, and that was the only “set break.” My Friend included a Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo jam. SOAM subsequently included additional Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo teases and an atypical jam. Chalk Dust contained Barracuda teases. Suzy contained a Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo tease from Trey. Ginseng Sullivan through Dog Faced Boy were performed acoustic and without microphones, and Sweet Adeline and Amazing Grace were performed without microphones.

The infamous Fire Alarm Show. This was a pretty wild one. The venue is very nice and ornate. They were used to having plays and symphonies there, hence the 70 year old security women and “no smoking of any kind” rule.
My friends and I went in the venue and found our seats, which were about fifteen rows back from the stage. I then decided to hit up the bathroom before the show. This was my first indicator that the Cincinnati Music Hall would not know what hit them after this concert. I went in the men’s room door and it was a big cloud of smoke! There was a security guard (yes, a 70 year old woman) yelling at the kids to put out their hand rolled cigarettes, and go back to their seats. It was like getting caught by grandma doing something really bad. I thought she was going to start grabbing our ears and taking us to the principal's office. But low and behold, everyone just bolted out and scrambled in different directions.
After this experience I decided to just go back to my seat and take my chances there. The show started. Seconds later the mob of people took all the chairs on the lower floor and stacked them on the ground. At this point Grandma and her cohorts had run for cover. The whole place started filling
up with smoke. It was complete anarchy (but in a wholesome, not-looking-for-real-trouble kind of anarchy). Trust me, I know good Anarchy and bad Anarchy. I’ve seen Guns and Roses a couple times.
So as far as the music went, it was good until the middle of “Horse”. The lights went on and the fire alarm went off. I have two theories about this: there was so much smoke the ire alarm went off, or somebody set it off. Regardless, we were forced to evacuate, even though we all knew darn well there was no fire, or at least not yet.
So we filed outside and all discussed whether the show would go on or not. Then came the announcement that we could go back in. The only good part of this evacuation was that if you didn’t have a ticket you could go in for free.
Everyone got back in and the band came back out, and Trey made an announcement: “The fire marshal (not Tom) says that if there is any more smoking of any kind, the show will be over.” Then the band went into a ripping version of Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire”.
The other part of the show that was pretty memorable to me was the acoustic part. “Ginseng Sullivan”, “BBFCFM” reprise, and “Dog Faced Boy” were a lot of fun to hear acoustic. I think that is the only acoustic “BBFCFM” I have ever heard, but hopefully not the last.
All in all it was a very chaotic experience. But fun.
Note: During “My Friend My Friend”, a buddy I went to show with (who was delirious) tried to convince me that he set off the fire alarm with his mind, and Phish was playing “My Friend” because we were all mad he set off the alarm and messed up the show. He then left the show. If anyone can prove or disprove this, let me know.

The Split Open and Melt in this show is my all time favorite. It starts out in typical 94 Melt fashion but soon Mike starts up a different chord progression which gives the jam a feel like its going back and forth between major and minor almost. This continues for a while until it calms down and trey and mike start up this upbeat major descending riff. This is a perfect example of the guys communicating and picking up on changes and licks in a split second. This jam becomes super beautiful and quiet until it morphs back into a classic Melt finish. What a Jam. One of my favorites for sure. Its on livebait 4 and i suggest everybody should take a listen to this gem.

The story of my first Phish show actually begins the Saturday before, while all of you fools were having fun at the 6/18/94 Chicago show. My roommate and some friends had a “great place” to drink at an apartment complex in the grass under some trees where no one ever went. Being only 20 years old, we all thought it would be good to go out there and have some fun. Now I had mostly stopped drinking at this point, but my roommate had 3 Lowenbrau beers and I had never tried it before, so I figured I would have one. I drank about a third of it and we hear “what are you doing back here?” and see some flashlights. So my roommate, 2 or 3 friends, and I were all cited for underage drinking. The cops said there would be a small fine, but no jail time, and we should learn our lesson.

We all showed up that following Monday in court, pleaded no contest, and think we are all good because none of us had prior records. So they take us to a room to wait for the judge to call us back in to receive our punishment. While we were waiting, one of our friends says that one of his friends was given the max penalty to teach her a lesson for underage drinking and the judge reduced her sentence after a couple of hours. Well, I guess the clerk overheard him and told the judge because the next thing we know the judge tells us each one by one that we get the max of $1000 and 6 months in jail! We could not believe it.

So they take us downstairs to the jail and the other guys in the cell just laughed at our story. Our friend that had spilled the beans said the judge was just messing with us. And we told him to shut up! But the guards told us that the judge was so upset that he was sending us to the county jail and was enforcing our max sentences. So at the end of the day, they transported us downtown to the county jail. We were together, but we were in lockup with a guy that was facing murder charges…this was the real deal. One of our parents was able to get us in the same cell, but it was with 8-10 other guys.

The next morning, after eating the “great” food at the county jail, they transported us in our green jumpsuits back to see the judge. He asked us who shared his little secret and my friend fessed up. The judge yelled at him for a while, but he reduced our sentences to time served and we were on our way…except they had to transport us back to the county jail to check out and the transport only ran at the end of the day…and we had tickets for our first Phish show that night!

Somehow we made it back to the county jail and got checked out in time. One kid got dragged straight home, but the rest of our parents thought spending the night at the county jail was punishment enough, so we were on our way to the show! We walked in just as the jam for the opener, Runaway Jim, was starting. I didn’t know that song (only had Nectar, Rift, and Hoist and no live tapes at that point), but the nice guy next to us filled me in.

Of course, as we all know, during the fifth song of the first set, the band had to tell us to leave during The Horse because the fire alarm went off. Everyone just chilled outside until they let us back in to finish the show. The crowd went nuts when Trey said they were playing through, made the “smoking in the boys room” joke, and started up Fire. Oh, and hopefully you already know that the Split from this show is out of this world and the Hood is pretty good, too…

Needless to say, it was quite a memorable experience for a first Phish show that I will never forget...and I've never had a Lowenbrau since.

Phish.net is a non-commercial project run by and for Phish fans under the
auspices of the all-volunteer, non-profit Mockingbird Foundation. This project
serves to compile, preserve, and protect encyclopedic information about Phish
and their music. But we need your help!